Quentin Tarantino: Definitive Guide To Homages, Influences And References
Inglourious Basterds
24. The Uneasy Hospitality Scene
The first scene in the film - in which Colonel Hans Landa visits the French farmer and attempts to extract information from him - is highly reminiscent of the second scene in Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. In that iconic western, Angel Eyes "The Bad" Sentenza (Lee Van Cleef) is first visible in the distance, and is observed by somebody performing a menial task, whilst melancholic Ennio Morricone music plays over the top, all of which occurs in Inglourious Basterds.
Like Landa, Angel Eyes invites himself into somebody's home and interrogates them (in the case of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, it's a former soldier) on the location of a missing man (Landa is looking for hidden Jews). The former soldier even looks physically similar to the French farmer. The composition of the entire scene, complete with shrill musical cues accompanying the burst of violence that ends the sequence, makes these two scenes unbearably comparable. Perfect, given that Tarantino envisioned the movie as a "western with WW2 iconography", and The Good, the Bad And The Ugly is his favourite film.
Tarantino seems to have a particular fondness for this scene, as it's similarly mirrored in Pulp Fiction, though not quite to the same extent. Hans Landa seems to have been somewhat based on the character of Angel Eyes Sentenza. Both are renound for their expertise in finding people, and support a similar "opportunistic" mantra. "When I start off to find somebody I find 'em. That's why they pay me," Angel Eyes says before shooting down his first victim.
23. Landa's Sherlock Pipe
Landa is first and foremost a brilliant detective. He smokes a pipe, presumably a nod to Sherlock Holmes, pop culture's most famous detective.
22. The Searchers
Despite outspokenly not being a fan of John Ford, Tarantino does take the time to homage an iconic image from his most famous film, The Searchers. When Shosanna is running for her life away from the Nazi's, Tarantino frames "The Jew Hunter" Hans Landa in the doorway looking beyond in the same way, and shot in the same angle, as Ford did John Wayne.